ACCEPTING THE METAPHOR OF BALANCING LIBERTY AND SECURITY

From a philosophical perspective, there has been an ongoing debate on not only how to balance liberty and security, but if the two can or should be balanced in the first place. If liberty and security should be balanced, then this balance will never be constant and one will inevitably take precedence over the other. If they should not be balanced, then there is the question of which one ought to take precedence. In “Liberty and Security—Can We Have Both?”, Stanley Cohen supports the notion of balance, but he argues that liberty should be given more weight than security. In “How Terrorism Upsets Liberty”, Tamar Meisels, on the other hand, rejects the metaphor of balancing liberty and security. She argues that they cannot be weighed against each other because security is a prerequisite for liberty. The metaphor of balance, however, should not be denied. Both liberty and security should be distributed with careful consideration of the other, where the balance between them will never remain constant, but will alter depending on necessity.


Stanley Cohen begins his paper with the statement, “[h]uman security may be the precondition to liberty, but it should not be valued above liberty for, when so weighed, it is capable of destroying liberty” (Cohen, 1). Cohen’s aim is to show how, when security is given precedence over liberty, it destroys liberty because citizens consent to give the government more power than it would normally have. The abuse and misuse of this power by the government is what eventually destroys liberty. One example of how security can harm liberty is in the case of Liban Hussein, a man who was listed under companion legislation to the Anti-terrorism Act (Cohen, 3). Due to lack of evidence that Hussein was affiliated with a terrorist organization, his name was removed from both the Canadian and United Nations lists, but not before his livelihood had been lost. Cohen does not doubt the value of security and he states, “[o]rder and security under law—that is, the maintenance of national security—are essential to the maintenance of the Rule of Law” (Cohen, 5). He also argues, however, that once liberty has been reduced and security has been increased, fear and insecurity grows within citizens as well as an insatiable need within them to be informed about everything and these cannot be taken back (Cohen, 11).


While Cohen argues that liberty should be favoured when balancing liberty and security, Tamar Meisels rejects the metaphor of balance altogether. She argues that, since security is a prerequisite for liberty, the two should not be weighed against each other and security should “take priority in the relative ranking of these two goods” (Meisels, 164). Meisels examines liberty and security in relation to the origins of the social contract between man and government as described by Hobbes and Locke, where the contract is entered specifically for security reasons. In both the Hobbesian and Lockean state of nature, there is no sense of community so the citizens have to care for themselves. While everyone has uninhibited freedom to do as they please, none of them have any security or personal safety available to them that would protect their freedom--except for one’s own physical strength. In order to attain personal protection, the citizens contract either amongst themselves to place a sovereign in charge (according to Hobbes) or with the sovereign (according to Locke). Just as individuals initially consented to government protection in exchange for absolute and unprotected freedom, citizens need to continue to grant governments more power than they originally consented to in order to protect civil liberties and natural rights.


In arguing that personal safety is a prerequisite for liberty, Meisels essentially implies that liberty cannot exist without security. In the hypothetical state of nature as defined by Hobbes and Locke, man had liberty, but not security. Although aspects of the state of nature are hypothetical, it is nonetheless relevant for picturing how man existed prior to the formation of government. Liberty can exist without security, but an individual would constantly need to be defending him or herself against others instead of enjoying his or her freedom. Security or personal safety can exist without liberty, but it similarly cannot be enjoyed unless one has the freedom to live as one pleases. Both liberty and security can thus exist independently of the other, but the presence or absence of one highly affects how much the other is enjoyed and thus valued by those who have it. This does not imply that liberty cannot be enjoyed without security or vice versa, but that liberty can be enjoyed in different ways with the presence of security than it can in its absence.


Liberty and security must be balanced with each other because striking a balance is the only way to maximize the enjoyment of both. Balancing the two, however, requires sacrificing elements of each aspect. For example, citizens do not have the freedom to kill or harm others at random without punishment, but in return they are offered protection in the sense that it is less likely that they will be killed or harmed at random. Some sacrifices, however, are not as widely accepted as others. Certain individuals are faced with the threat of being labelled as a terrorist or as supporting terrorism if they provide aid to certain political groups or organizations that are suspected of being linked with terrorism. Another sacrifice is the potential use of racial profiling by government officials who claim to be following anti-terrorism laws (although racial profiling is not condoned by Canadian anti-terrorism laws). Some sacrifices are not as widely accepted by some because some are more affected by the limitations on their civil liberties than others.


This problem will continue to occur, however, because the civil liberties of some minority groups are sacrificed more than that of the majority. In balancing liberty and security, what is restricted from some and protected for others will vary amongst different groups of people. The issue then becomes how far the balance can be tipped. As they are balanced, sacrifices will inevitably have to be made, but it is unknown to what extent certain sacrifices are permissible or acceptable. When rights or freedoms are being restricted, Stanley Cohen argues, that it is the state’s burden to show that the reasoning behind the limiting measures is sufficiently important to justify overriding a constitutionally protected right and that the means chosen are proportional to the desired ends (Cohen, 13). Tamar Meisels similarly argues that it is permissible to restrict liberty under strict conditions where it will effectively enhance public security (Meisels, 179). The ideal balance between liberty and security is not known, nor will the balance ever remain fixed. What is important, however, is not worrying about what constitutes the ideal balance, but that the steps taken to achieve a desirable balance are justifiable and conscious of what is being limited and how it affects others.


Works Cited:


Stanley A. Cohen, "Liberty and Security - Can We Have Both?" A paper prepared for the conference of the International Society for the Reform of the Criminal Law on “Technology and Its Effects on Criminal Responsibility, Security and Criminal Justice”, Charleston, South Carolina, December 10, 2002.


Tamar Meisels, "How Terrorism Upsets Liberty", Political Studies, vol. 53, no. 1(2005), pp. 162-181.